THE BEATLES, THE STONES & MARY SCRUGGS

The Stones with Sally (left) and Mary (right)

As any Beatles nut will tell you, the crowded cover of Sgt. Pepper's, photographed by Michael Cooper, includes a nod to the Stones in the form of a Shirley Temple doll wearing a knitted sweater with the words 'WELCOME THE ROLLING STONES' stitched onto it. According to Wikipedia here, this item of clothing 'was provided by Cooper's young son Adam'. In fact, it seems to have been given to the Beatles by Mick Jagger himself, an earth-shattering discovery I made as I flicked through the packed August 1966 issue of Hit Parader (actually out in June).

As you can imagine, the Stones - like all touring bands in the mid-60s - were besieged by competition winners wherever they went. Two such were Mary Scruggs and Sally Ware from Memphis, Tennessee, who got to go backstage before the band's performance at the Mid-South Coliseum on November 17th 1965. Hit Parader - writing about the event some months after the show - made it clear that the Stones were not popular with the venue:

Nonetheless, the girls managed to meet the band after winning different sections in an art contest organised by a local radio station, WMPS (the sweatshirt does not say 'WMCA', despite what practically every source says). Sally's effort was a terrible charcoal portrait of Mick:

Mary, meanwhile, went down the knitwear route. According to the article, she was '17, a Senior at Immaculate Conception High School and an officer in a local Rolling Stones Fan Club':

As the extract above makes clear, Mary gave the sweater to Mick at his request. Far from dumping it as soon as she departed (the likely fate for Sally's drawing), he seems to have taken care to bring it back to the UK, ensuring its place in history when it was photographed in glorious technicolor on March 30th 1967. 

At the close of the year, the Stones repaid the Beatles' tribute by hiding their faces in the lenticular image on the cover of Their Satanic Majesties Request. You can read all about that here. As for Mary - well, she seems to have gone on to become an elementary school art teacher, under the name Mary Anne May. You can read a little more about her here.

FLASHBACK ISSUE #2

I'm delighted to announce that Flashback #2 will be available as of October 31st. Tomorrow are on the cover, and the accompanying feature includes full interviews with all the members, as well as several other figures close to the band. Also included are a jukebox from Ethan Miller of Howlin Rain, a study by Richie Unterberger of how old music papers are preserved, the Top 100 Overlooked Early Hard Rock LPs, and in-depth features on Dragonfly, Morgen, Judy Dyble, Influence, Harold McNair, Ray Russell, the 13th Floor Elevators and more, as well as music / book reviews and plenty of rare / unseen images and vintage music paper reprints. Enjoy! 

KALEIDOSCOPE: 'four born professionals'

Here's the rare press release that Fontana sent out in August 1967, to announce the imminent mega-stardom of Kaleidoscope. Enjoy!

JOHN LENNON: 'dead gifted'

Ivan Vaughan was the guy who introduced John Lennon and Paul McCartney at the Woolton village fête on July 6th 1957. Born on the same day as Paul, he was a childhood friend of both, and known to them as 'Ivy'. Having graduated in classics from University College, London, in 1964 he and his wife Jan set off on a hitch-hiking honeymoon around America. At the same time the Beatles were busily conquering the country, so Vaughan gave this rare interview to Datebook (the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday arts supplement) on August 16th. It contains no startling revelations, but there are a few interesting insights. Vaughan went on to become a teacher, and in 1968 discussed the idea of opening an Apple school (as detailed in Derek Taylor's autobiography). He died after a lengthy struggle against Parkinson's disease in 1993. [With thanks to Richie Unterberger.]

THE COMMON PEOPLE: 'bordering at times on the psychedelic'

I'm delighted to post what I suspect are the only two contemporary articles ever written about the enigmatic Common People. Both come from the reliably mindblowing World Countdown, and appeared in the summer of 1969, to coincide with their fascinating album. The first seems simply to be a reproduction of Capitol's press release, while the second is a gushing interview by Dodie Smith, the paper's latter-day editor (who came from Liverpool, and appears to have vanished without trace). It's interesting to learn how explicitly Christian their world view was, having gone through a biker / garage phase before a 'spiritual type sojourn in the desert', where they 'existed on bread and water for long periods of time'. Most intriguing is the fact that they tore down their rehearsal space and put everything in it 'in an immense box which they had constructed, and buried it in the ground'. Enjoy!

World Countdown 6:3 (June 27th 1969)

World Countdown 6:4 (July 10th 1969)

Incidentally, the portrait of Denny is credited to Nik Raceivic, who went on to make some interesting electronic albums in the 70s...

DENIS PRESTON: 'a smooth operator'

He's largely forgotten now, but in the 1960s Denis Preston (1916-79) was Britain's pre-eminent jazz producer and entrepreneur. He recorded innumerable albums at his own expense in his Lansdowne Studio in Holland Park, then licensed them to EMI and others through his Record Supervision company. Without him, there would probably be no albums by Rendell-Carr, Mike Taylor, Joe Harriott, Stan Tracey, Indo-Jazz Fusions, Amancio D'Silva, Guy Warren, Neil Ardley and many others. The same can't be said of any individual in any other genre, as far as I can think. There's barely info on him available, so I thought I'd post a couple of rare Melody Maker articles that fill in a bit of background.


First, a tribute by Ian Carr, published on May 18th 1968:

Second, a profile by Bob Houston, published on September 14th 1968:

TAMAM SHUD: "Sounds OK to me"

Whilst I admit to never having met anyone who likes it as much as me, it's no exaggeration to say that I think Goolutionites & The Real People by Tamam Shud is one of the best rock albums of the early 70s. I was amazed to find this article in Go-Set (Australia's main music paper of the time), dated July 4th 1970. Despite its optimistic predictions, the LP appeared in October and sank without trace.